Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

What You Can Learn From Public Markets It doesn’t really take a genius to realize that what happens in the public markets will filter back to the private markets because the ultimate exit of these companies is either an IPO or an acquisition (often by a public company whose valuation is fixed daily by the market). What is a VC To Do?

Technical Review 416

Technical Review Pre-Money Valuation San Francisco Valuation 416

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 7, 2022

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is an important metric for any ecommerce business. Put simply, you need a healthy customer acquisition cost for your business to succeed. It’s up to every ecommerce business to find the middle ground between investing too little in customer acquisition and spending beyond your means.

Acquisition 22

Acquisition eCommerce Cost Customer 22

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 24, 2021

The Founder needs to remember that meetings up to this point have been primarily off-site, with staged demos, and managed personally by the CEO or a small team. Sales and distribution channel activity will be analyzed, as well as cost of customer acquisition, to make an independent assessment of your financial projections.

Technical Review 379

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Bankruptcy 379

TechEmpower

JULY 31, 2023

When talking to startup founders or other innovators, we always ask questions to better understand their business as a core. One way to approach that last question is to use this simple model: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) How will your business reach prospects? This isn’t a simple, first-cut acquisition pipeline!

Metrics 260

Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 260

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 14, 2017

As the idea went from innovating on software & systems to launching a company to rolling it out in the field brought on Rahul Gandhi as his co-founder to physically launch the company. How long does it take me to pay back my original customer acquisition costs? How profitable is my product or service? Seriously, this happens.

Operations 286

Operations New York City Technical Review Startup 286

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 14, 2022

The key elements of leadership in a company, both individual and organizational, are less tangible, but very critical in setting a market value for investment, acquisition, or going public. For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company.

Technical Review 323

Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation Leadership 323

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

The key elements of leadership in a company, both individual and organizational, are less tangible, but very critical in setting a market value for investment, acquisition, or going public. For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company.

Valuation 311

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Leadership 311

Hunter Walker

APRIL 17, 2025

Joe Hyrkin: I first started learning about and paying attention to Bending Spoons when they announced their acquisition of Evernote in January 2023. Exits come in many forms, from an IPO at the high end, to secondary sales, private to private merger, strategic or PE acquisition, or sometimes, an acquihire or bankruptcy.

Covenant 77

Covenant Acquisition IPO Artificial Inteligence 77

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 14, 2022

Don’t forget a viable financial model of costs, margins, customer acquisition, and break-even. All too often, founders fall in love with their products or technology, ignore negative feedback from customers, and spend years building a product based on a vision that no one else shares.

Angel Investor 359

Angel Investor Technical Review Incubator Business Model 359

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Or is it something that can grow to a size that will result in an acquisition or some liquidity event? And you and your cofounders need to have that discussion to make sure that all the co-founders’ interests are aligned – before you make any decision to start the company. See 4:36 in the video below).

Cofounder 330

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 330

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2022

A particularly critical moment is when the founders hand over the leadership to a more managerial regime. This is the end game for an industry, and many companies, characterized by mergers and acquisitions to a few dominant players. Geographic expansion. The emphasis is on global processes and tight execution. Consolidation.

Dilution 355

Dilution Startup Merger Flash 355

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 6, 2023

The Founder needs to remember that meetings up to this point have been primarily off-site, with staged demos, and managed personally by the CEO or a small team. Sales and distribution channel activity will be analyzed, as well as cost of customer acquisition, to make an independent assessment of your financial projections.

Technical Review 296

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Bankruptcy 296

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 29, 2014

This is why investors (and founders) wishing to build enormous companies are so fixated on hyper-growth (not just growth). Indeed, at some point 10x is strictly impossible. At the high end, you hit market size limits (Facebook has 1.3B ” Going from 1000 to 2000 in six months is more like it.).

Software Review 300

Software Review Technical Review Startup Channel 300

VC Cafe

MARCH 16, 2025

Mention that you do “Consumer tech” as a startup founder and you’d be limiting your funding options to one third of the venture capital funds (in Israel that figure is probably closer to 10%). High User Acquisition Costs: The landscape for acquiring new users has become increasingly complex and expensive.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review B2C Generative AI IPO 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Technology in search of a market.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

The options here include going public (IPO), merger/acquisition, liquidate, or no exit, just paying off investors. In fact, this context is your best opportunity to attract a co-founder who has the business skills and interests that are complementary to your technical strengths. Most investors don’t want long-term commitments.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

With over three decades of experience in private equity investments, acquisitions and mergers, Mark Hauser has developed a keen ability to recognize trends and do his due diligence. In tandem with these efforts toward organic growth, they will also explore opportunities for inorganic growth through acquisitions.

Private Equity 165

Private Equity Equity Technical Review Software Review 165

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2020

In the spirit of helping you prepare and respond positively, I offer my list of the most common new venture founder unexpected realities, with some thoughts on how to mitigate each one: The business seems to be driving you, rather than you driving it. You need all the positive traction you can get to survive and prosper.

Entrepreneur 306

Entrepreneur Due Diligence Startup Acquisition 306

Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 11, 2021

Photo by Vanna Phon on Unsplash Customer acquisition is the lifeblood of many startups from e-commerce to gaming to marketplace companies, among others. But if you ask anyone in the ecosystem of customer acquisition?—?founders, founders, marketers, investors?—?and no surprise?—?that’s that’s where the customers are.

Founder 424

Founder Product Cofounder Acquisition 424

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 3, 2013

We spent a year (2012-2013) building a merchant acquisition machine and all of the systems to support bookings, calendar integrations, location services, etc. And today it was listed in the Best Apps of the Week by Apple. The team has put in a huge effort to get to this day – and I hope they’re sleeping well tonight.

Development Team Review 324

Development Team Review Los Angeles San Francisco Mobile 324

VC Cafe

MAY 17, 2023

But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains” Steve Jobs (from Chapter 8) I got to meet Uri Levine, the founder of Waze and Moovit, through his involvement in the Zell Entrepreneurship program at Reichman University. It starts from how founders pitch their startups.

Founder 103

Founder Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 103

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2020

Changing Acquisition. Now we get down to the difficult questions of execution and implementation, which is where they have foundered in the past. Then write requirements to what we think it’s going to look like and then throw a lot of money at industry to deliver that future on very long timelines.

Technical Review 399

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Technology United States 399

Duct Tape Marketing

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

A Startup Journey With GrubHub Founder Mike Evans written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. 7:52] Was there competition that you had to buy up, and/or what type of acquisitions did you feel like you had to make? [9:19] What type of acquisitions did you feel like you had to make. Marketing Podcast with Mike Evans.

Founder 95

Founder Chicago Startup Kansas 95

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 26, 2023

” – Marc Andreessen In the book “ Super Founders “, author Ali Tamaseb, studied 200 Unicorns, aka startups valued at over $1 billion, started between 2005 to 2018. The 7 Traits of “Super Founders” 1. They should also invest in marketing and user acquisition to increase the network effect.

Founder 88

Founder Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation 88

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 12, 2018

Founder, Founder, Founder At Upfront we talk regularly about how 70% of our investment decision in Seed and A rounds is the quality of the entrepreneur and 30% is the quality of the idea. Why did Ring become an enormous success when it produced a hardware product and the market keeps saying, “hardware is too difficult to scale?”

Security 247

Security Los Angeles Silicon Valley Video 247

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2019

Don’t forget a viable financial model of costs, margins, customer acquisition, and break-even. All too often, founders fall in love with their products or technology, ignore negative feedback from customers, and spend years building a product based on a vision that no one else shares.

Startup 245

Startup Angel Investor Technical Review Incubator 245

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 6, 2020

is any liability incurred in the development, acquisition, use, and retirement of technology — i.e. hardware and software systems, or the skills set needed to support them. For SMBs, tech debt is a potential existential threat that could impact their future viability and very survival. Tech Debt 2.0

Technical Review 246

Technical Review Small Business Software Review Security 246

View from Seed

JANUARY 24, 2018

The concept our Guilds is simple: We want to bring together small groups of Product and Go-to-Market experts to lend their time to support our portfolio company founders and key operators. Pierre Valade, Co-Founder of Sunrise & Mobile Designer at Microsoft. Pierre Valade, Co-Founder of Sunrise & Mobile Designer at Microsoft.

Operations 176

Operations Cofounder Technical Review Angel Investor 176

TechEmpower

AUGUST 21, 2023

If you’re a CEO, product leader, investor, or a founder looking for investors, a technical review conducted by a neutral, experienced third party will help you discover what’s really happening and what’s needed to make improvements. Do your own review first so you can be confident and better positioned.

Technical Review 260

Technical Review Development Team Review Software Review Architecture 260

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 27, 2011

When they look at buying your company they often think in terms of “how long will it take until I earn back the profits to pay for my acquisition price?” At this level, as a founder you feel SO CLOSE to profitability that many say, “I’m going to keep my costs really low this year to try and hit profitability.

Startup 418

Startup Revenue Technical Review Flash 418

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

Despite the war, in the last nine months Sequoia , Greylock and Accel all opened offices in Israel, and Founders Fund appointed a partner to cover Israeli deals. With the ongoing conflict, many founders and employees are serving in reserve duty, and the frequent flight cancellations have made it harder for international investors to connect.

Israel 183

Israel Technical Review Startup Generative AI 183

VC Cafe

JULY 21, 2020

If you’re a startup founder, you’re probably looking at Google in some way, maybe in terms of partnership or acquisition, but maybe some level of suspicion and fear. A relationship with Google can take many forms, which I will detail in this post as a guide for founders exploring their relationship with big tech.

Technical Review 131

Technical Review Startup Early Stage Cloud 131

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 28, 2018

My friend Michael Broukhim, founder & co-CEO of FabFitFun and I recently had a catch-up meeting for 3-miles on the Santa Monica “Bird Trail” No company has ever elicited so many questions by friends, colleagues, entrepreneurs, fellow VCs and journalists as has Bird, the company that pioneered the electronic scooter as a service market.

San Francisco 256

San Francisco Valuation Los Angeles Technical Review 256

VC Cafe

JANUARY 22, 2021

Amazon Corporate Development – Notable acquisitions include Whole Foods ($13.7B), smart doorbell system Ring ($1.2B, 2018) and autonomous mobility technology Zoox ($1.2bn). AWS Startups Blog – Head here for insights on startup related topics and guest posts from startup founders/leaders. Physical space.

Technical Review 174

Technical Review Startup Venture Capital Incubator 174

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2019

A particularly critical moment is when the founders hand over the leadership to a more managerial regime. This is the end game for an industry, and many companies, characterized by mergers and acquisitions to a few dominant players. Geographic expansion. The emphasis is on global processes and tight execution. Consolidation.

Dilution 224

Dilution Merger Flash Global 224

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 23, 2023

Our participation in Anchor ( later acquired by Spotify ) generated both a return and a friendship between us and the founders. Seriously though, were there things you saw as a founder – or an angel investor in other people’s companies – that informed your own approach to venture now? So that’s what I’m trying to do.

Founder 117

Founder Angel Investor Cap Table Distribution 117

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

GrowthHackers founder and former Head of Growth at Dropbox, Sean Ellis , coined the term: “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. In his course on Growth Mindset (part of CXL’s Growth Marketing Minidegree ), WeTheFuture.org founder John McBride describes three key components of a successful growth marketer: 1.

Retention 113

Retention Marketing Acquisition Channel 113